


Ice Cream Days

by Karasuno Volleygays (ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor)



Category: Haikyuu!!, ダイヤのA | Daiya no A | Ace of Diamond
Genre: Childhood Friends, Future Fic, M/M, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 10:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor/pseuds/Karasuno%20Volleygays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Koushi's first friend in Tokyo was a boy that nobody liked, but Miyuki Kazuya was more than anyone could imagine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice Cream Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nymphori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphori/gifts).



> This was a prompt on Tumblr for someone who could use a happy ending for these two, hehe.

Koushi looks at the baseball field with a dubious smile as his dad pats him on the shoulder. “Dad, what if I’m not good? And I don’t know anybody.”

“That’s why you’re here, Kou-chan. To make friends.” Sugawara-san pats Koushi on the shoulder. “As long as you give it your best shot and have fun, you’ll never have to worry about it. You’ll make plenty of friends.”

Seeing Koushi’s reticence, Sugawara-san knees in front of his son and smiles. “I know it’s hard living in a new place, but you’re a great kid and all you have to do is let them see that.”

“Okay.” Koushi bites his lip but takes his brand-new bat and glove in hand and leaves his dad’s shadow for the flock of kids gathering at home plate.

They all introduce themselves, and as he suspects, Koushi doesn’t know anybody. They pair off to practice throwing and catching, and before he knows it, Koushi is standing alone, hugging his glove next to third base.

“Oi!” comes a voice behind him. Koushi turns around and sees a boy waving at him with a wide grin. He’s easily a head shorter than Koushi, with a sideways ball cap and glasses far too big for his face. “Let’s play!”

“I —” Koushi looks down at his unsullied cleats. “I don’t know how.”

The other boy laughs as he drops a ball into Koushi’s hand. “That’s okay. It will be fun.”

His dad’s words echo in this stranger’s voice, and it comforts Koushi as he says, “All right.”

They stand about ten strides apart, and Koushi looks at the ball in his hand. “How do I . . .?”

The boy runs over to Koushi and turns him towards the fence behind home plate. He takes the ball and holds up his grip or Koushi to see. “Hold it like this.” He draws his arm back. “And this.” The ball launches out of his hand and into the fence. “And like that.”

“Okay.” Koushi retrieves the ball and mimics everything he was shown. “Seems easy enough.”

The ball sails out of Koushi’s hand, and straight into the dirt.

Laughing, the boy retrieves the ball and gives it back to Suga. “Here, try again.”

It takes twelve tries before the ball hits the fence right about where a glove would be, and they both cheer when Koushi succeeds. Over the bulk of practice, they toss the ball back and forth with varying degrees of success.

Koushi flinches away from the ball more than once when the boy throws it with more power than his tiny body should be able to produce, but soon he adjusts his senses to the speed of it and manages to get leather on it, even if it bounces off or falls out of his glove more than anything.

When the coach whistles to signal a stop to the drill, Koushi turns to his partner and says, “By the way, I’m Koushi. Sugawara Koushi.”

“Miyuki Kazuya,” the boy answers before sticking a dirty hand out to Koushi. He accepts the energetic handshake with a reflexive smile.

And that day, Koushi makes his first friend in Kazuya

 

Every day, their team pairs off for warm up catch ball, and every day, Koushi turns to Kazuya to be his partner, who never says no. Even when Koushi still struggles to throw the ball from second base to first without throwing it in the dirt while Kazuya throws bombs from home plate to second without any trouble at all.

Today, the coach announces the staring roster for the first game. Koushi isn’t chosen, much to his general lack of surprise, Kazuya is named as the starting catcher, and he isn’t surprised by the grumbles of dissent, either.

But Kazuya is all smiles as they walk home together, kicking a can along the way and sloppily eating an ice cream cone.

Koushi’s thoughts are heavy, though. “Does it bother you? That the senpai don’t like you?”

Kazuya bites off a shard of his ice cream before he gives a garbled, “No.”

“Why?” Koushi’s ice cream is melting unheeded as he stares straight ahead, walking past the can as he muses aloud, “I was so scared of just making friends being here. I don’t even know what I’d do if someone hated me.”

Shrugging, Kazuya darts out a finger and scrapes a trail of melted ice cream from Koushi’s hand and puts it in his mouth. “Mint chocolate chip is _awesome_!”

Koushi can’t help but smile as Kazuya evades the question, much like he does anytime Koushi tries to learn a little more about his only friend on the baseball team. Instead, he asks, “How is the butter pecan?”

Kazuya holds out his cone for Koushi to try, and the subject doesn’t come up again. Koushi is more than happy just walking side by side with him.

 

“But Dad, I don’t want to go!” Koushi whines as tears fill his eyes. “We just moved here. Why do we have to move again?”

Sugawara-san sighs as he squeezes Koushi’s shoulder. “You know that my job takes me a lot of places, and it isn’t fair to you to move around so much.”

Koushi jerks away and crosses his arms. “Then why are we moving again?”

“Because this is the last time.” Sugawara-san’s head droops as he looks at his shoes. “You and your mother are going to stay with your grandmother in Sendai permanently. You’ll get to have a life and make friends you’ll get to keep.” He crushes Koushi to his chest. His voice breaks as he says, “I’ll come to see you as much as I can.”

“I understand,” Koushi answers, even as he wants to rail and cry and rant that it isn’t fair. “It’s okay, Dad.”

School the next day is bad, but baseball practice is worse.

The moment Koushi sees Kazuya’s sideways cap, his eyes fill up and his throat swells enough to choke him. It’s hard to breathe and even harder to throw a ball, but he slogs his way through practice.

He barely speaks, and Kazuya doesn’t pry. It isn’t until they’re walking home together for what Koushi knows will be the last time that he stops in his tracks and takes Kazuya’s hand.

“Kazuya, I have to tell you something.”

Kazuya looks down at their joined hands and gives a light squeeze. “I know, Kou-chan. I heard you telling the coach.”

Koushi sniffles loudly, his lower lip wobbling as he keeps hold of Kazuya’s hand. They walk to Kazuya’s house behind the metal shop and sit in the yard shoulder to shoulder and watch the cars go by.

“I leave in a week,” Koushi finally offers. “We’re moving to Sendai with my grandmother so we don’t have to move around anymore.”

Kazuya nods at the information and continues to stare off into the distance. It isn’t until well after Koushi leaves off that he reacts again.

It’s so quick, Koushi could talk himself out of believing it ever happened if he wants to. Kazuya leaned over and pecked their lips together before resuming their wordless people-watching.

Koushi doesn’t leave until his phone buzzes in his pocket and his mother asks why he’s still not home. He looks at Kazuya in askance.

“Go ahead, Kou-chan.” He pushes his glasses up his nose and grins. “You played ball in Tokyo, so you can go there and be the best one there.”

“I —” Koushi’s denial is cut off by a finger over his lips.

Kazuya meets his gaze and says, “I’ll see you at Koushien. After all, there’s no Koushien without Koushi.”

With that, Kazuya stands and offers Koushi help to his feet as he sobs through the bad joke. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

They part ways at Koushi’s house as they’ve always done, except their ‘see you tomorrow’ is a plain ‘see you’.

A week later, Koushi is in Sendai, talking to the guidance counselor about classes and clubs. Sensei mentions baseball, and Koushi declines. Finally, he settles on a sport that reminds him the least of baseball and joins the volleyball club instead.

And after a few weeks, he decides that maybe it’s not so bad after all.

 

“Come on, Koushi!” Sugawara-san calls as he makes his way down to the fence. “We can at least pretend to have good seats.”

“Coming, Dad!” twenty-four year old Koushi calls as he jogs down the steps to join his father to watch the Tokyo Yakult Swallows warm up before their opening game of the season. “I got the popcorn you like.”

They stand together and munch on their popcorn, watching the local heroes warm up before the start of a brand new season. It isn’t until they’re finishing up that Sugawara-san finally says, “I’m sorry we don’t see each other much, Koushi.” He sighs and leans a graying temple against the chain-link fence. “But work is so —”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Koushi says truthfully as he drops his chin on his father’s shoulder. “I know you did the best you could for us, and I don’t mind coming down here to see you. Hokkaido was rough, but I froze for a good cause.”

Koushi pulls Sugawara-san close for a hug, not realizing that someone is watching him until a throat clears. Looking around the bleachers, Koushi frowns when he doesn’t see anyone behind him. It isn’t until he gets a nudge on the shoulder and looks out at the practice field.

It takes a moment to see him through the bulky catcher’s garb and the different glasses, but Koushi doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that grin or those wide eyes that glitter with such joy.

“Kazuya.”

Koushi presses up against the fence, drinking in the sight of someone he hasn’t seen in well over a decade, yet thought about the moment he stepped into the stadium.

Sugawara-san gives a knowing nod and says, “I’m going to get some more popcorn before the crowds get here.” He leaves before Koushi can even register his words.

As soon as they’re alone, Kazuya’s fingers curl around Koushi’s through the metal as he says, “You never made it to Koushien. I was waiting for you.”

Koushi lets out a choked laugh. “But I made it to nationals. Didn’t really expect to see you there, though. You don’t seem the volleyball type.”

“Nah.” Kazuya’s sparkling laugh, the one that had nursed Koushi through the painful adjustment to a new school and a new sport, rings out. “I skipped that booth on club day.”

“I bet. Nothing but baseball for you. I never really took to it.”

Kazuya chortles. “But you tried, and I thought we had fun.”

“We really did.” Koushi looks down and takes a shaky breath. “I missed you. So much.”

The sense of loss is immediate and painfully familiar when Kazuya backs away, but it’s washed away when he sees what Kazuya pulls out of his gear. It’s a baseball, and he can see a string of numbers written between the seams.

“Just in case you want to learn how to play again, Kou-chan,” Kazuya says as he flips the ball up into the protective netting, watching as it dribbles down to catch at the top of the chain link and then slip to the concrete at Koushi’s feet.

A stuttering hand reaches down to pick up this ball, the first thing that he and Kazuya have both touched in half a lifetime. His fingers trace the numbers and he smiles at all the memories. “Do you think that ice cream place is still there?”

Kazuya’s lips quirk. “I know it is.”

“Have you tried the mint chocolate chip?”

“I get it every time.”

Koushi’s heart lurches, and he brings the ball up to his lips. “I’m in town for a week.”

“So am I.” Kazuya takes a step back. “Maybe we could try out some other flavors. I hear there’s a new one they got from America. I think I read the label wrong, though. They said it’s kind of like mint chocolate chip, but it says it’s made out of little girls.”

Koushi laughs, his voice wet and crackling as he waves. “We’ll have to try it.”

With that, he watches Kazuya give a jaunty wave before heading back to the clubhouse, looking back over his shoulder every once in a while like he never did the last time they saw each other.

 _And I don’t ever want to look back again_ , Koushi thinks as he holds the baseball like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Almost as precious as his first best friend.


End file.
